‘Suddenly I heard behind me, and about on a level with my head, a sort of rattling sound. I turned sharp round and saw that the brute had crawled up the wall as high as the level of my face, and that its horrible tail, which was mov-ing incredibly fast from side to side, was actually touching my hair! I jumped up—and it disappeared. I did not dare lie down on my bed for fear it should creep under my pillow. My mother came into the room, and some friends of hers. They began to hunt for the reptile and were more composed than I was; they did not seem to be afraid of it. But they did not understand as I did.
‘Suddenly the monster reappeared; it crawled slowly across the room and made for the door, as though with some fixed intention, and with a slow movement that was more horrible than ever.
‘Then my mother opened the door and called my dog, Norma. Norma was a great Newfoundland, and died five
years ago.
‘She sprang forward and stood still in front of the reptile as if she had been turned to stone. The beast stopped too, but its tail and claws still moved about. I believe animals are incapable of feeling supernatural fright—if I have been rightly informed,—but at this moment there appeared to me to be something more than ordinary about Norma’s ter-ror, as though it must be supernatural; and as though she felt, just as I did myself, that this reptile was connected with some mysterious secret, some fatal omen.
‘Norma backed slowly and carefully away from the brute, which followed her, creeping deliberately after her as though it intended to make a sudden dart and sting her.
‘In spite of Norma’s terror she looked furious, though she trembled in all her limbs. At length she slowly bared her terrible teeth, opened her great red jaws, hesitated—took courage, and seized the beast in her mouth. It seemed to try to dart out of her jaws twice, but Norma caught at it and half swallowed it as it was escaping. The shell cracked in her teeth; and the tail and legs stuck out of her mouth and shook about in a horrible manner. Suddenly Norma gave a pite-ous whine; the reptile had bitten her tongue. She opened her mouth wide with the pain, and I saw the beast lying across her tongue, and out of its body, which was almost bitten in two, came a hideous white-looking substance, oozing out into Norma’s mouth; it was of the consistency of a crushed black-beetle. just then I awoke and the prince entered the room.’
‘Gentlemen!’ said Hippolyte, breaking off here, ‘I have
not done yet, but it seems to me that I have written down a great deal here that is unnecessary,—this dream—‘
‘You have indeed!’ said Gania.
‘There is too much about myself, I know, but—‘ As Hip-polyte said this his face wore a tired, pained look, and he wiped the sweat off his brow.
‘Yes,’ said Lebedeff, ‘you certainly think a great deal too much about yourself.’
‘Well—gentlemen—I do not force anyone to listen! If any of you are unwilling to sit it out, please go away, by all means!’
‘He turns people out of a house that isn’t his own,’ mut-tered Rogojin.
‘Suppose we all go away?’ said Ferdishenko suddenly. Hippolyte clutched his manuscript, and gazing at the last
speaker with glittering eyes, said: ‘You don’t like me at all!’ A few laughed at this, but not all.
‘Hippolyte,’ said the prince, ‘give me the papers, and go to bed like a sensible fellow. We’ll have a good talk tomor-row, but you really mustn’t go on with this reading; it is not good for you!’
‘How can I? How can I?’ cried Hippolyte, looking at him in amazement. ‘Gentlemen! I was a fool! I won’t break off again. Listen, everyone who wants to!’
He gulped down some water out of a glass standing near, bent over the table, in order to hide his face from the audi-ence, and recommenced.
‘The idea that it is not worth while living for a few weeks took possession of me a month ago, when I was told that I
had four weeks to live, but only partially so at that time. The idea quite overmastered me three days since, that evening at Pavlofsk. The first time that I felt really impressed with this thought was on the terrace at the prince’s, at the very moment when I had taken it into my head to make a last trial of life. I wanted to see people and trees (I believe I said so myself), I got excited, I maintained Burdovsky’s rights, ‘my neighbour!’—I dreamt that one and all would open their
arms, and embrace me, that there would be an indescrib-able exchange of forgiveness between us all! In a word, I behaved like a fool, and then, at that very same instant, I felt my ‘last conviction.’ I ask myself now how I could have waited six months for that conviction! I knew that I had a disease that spares no one, and I really had no illusions; but the more I realized my condition, the more I clung to life; I wanted to live at any price. I confess I might well have re-sented that blind, deaf fate, which, with no apparent reason, seemed to have decided to crush me like a fly; but why did I not stop at resentment? Why did I begin to live, knowing that it was not worthwhile to begin? Why did I attempt to do what I knew to be an impossibility? And yet I could not even read a book to the end; I had given up reading. What is the good of reading, what is the good of learning anything, for just six months? That thought has made me throw aside a book more than once.
‘Yes, that wall of Meyer’s could tell a tale if it liked. There was no spot on its dirty surface that I did not know by heart. Accursed wall! and yet it is dearer to me than all the Pav-lofsk trees!—That is—it WOULD be dearer if it were not all
the same to me, now!
‘I remember now with what hungry interest I began to watch the lives of other people—interest that I had never felt before! I used to wait for Colia’s arrival impatiently, for I was so ill myself, then, that I could not leave the house. I so threw myself into every little detail of news, and took so much interest in every report and rumour, that I believe I became a regular gossip! I could not understand, among other things, how all these people—with so much life in and before them—do not become RICH— and I don’t under-stand it now. I remember being told of a poor wretch I once knew, who had died of hunger. I was almost beside myself with rage! I believe if I could have resuscitated him I would have done so for the sole purpose of murdering him!
‘Occasionally I was so much better that I could go out; but the streets used to put me in such a rage that I would lock myself up for days rather than go out, even if I were well enough to do so! I could not bear to see all those pre-occupied, anxious-looking creatures continuously surging along the streets past me! Why are they always anxious? What is the meaning of their eternal care and worry? It is their wickedness, their perpetual detestable malice—that’s what it is—they are all full of malice, malice!
‘Whose fault is it that they are all miserable, that they don’t know how to live, though they have fifty or sixty years of life before them? Why did that fool allow himself to die of hunger with sixty years of unlived life before him?
‘And everyone of them shows his rags, his toil-worn hands, and yells in his wrath: ‘Here are we, working like
cattle all our lives, and always as hungry as dogs, and there are others who do not work, and are fat and rich!’ The eter-nal refrain! And side by side with them trots along some wretched fellow who has known better days, doing light porter’s work from morn to night for a living, always blub-bering and saying that ‘his wife died because he had no money to buy medicine with,’ and his children dying of cold and hunger, and his eldest daughter gone to the bad, and so on. Oh! I have no pity and no patience for these fools of people. Why can’t they be Rothschilds? Whose fault is it that a man has not got millions of money like Rothschild? If he has life, all this must be in his power! Whose fault is it that he does not know how to live his life?
‘Oh! it’s all the same to me now—NOW! But at that time I would soak my pillow at night with tears of mortifica-tion, and tear at my blanket in my rage and fury. Oh, how I longed at that time to be turned out—ME, eighteen years old, poor, half-clothed, turned out into the street, quite alone, without lodging, without work, without a crust of bread, without relations, without a single acquaintance, in some large town—hungry, beaten (if you like), but in good health—and THEN I would show them—
‘What would I show them?
‘Oh, don’t think that I have no sense of my own humilia-tion! I have suffered already in reading so far. Which of you all does not think me a
